What the Heathrow Cyber Attack Teaches Small Businesses About Cybersecurity

It is easy to think, “We are nothing like Heathrow. Hackers will never come after us.” The truth is that you don’t need to be the direct target of a cyber attack to feel its impact.

What Happened, When and Why It Matters

• What happened? In September 2025, Heathrow and several other European airports faced chaos after attackers hit a software supplier that airlines rely on for check-in, baggage and boarding systems.
• When did it happen? The disruption lasted days, causing widespread delays, cancellations and reputational damage across multiple airports.
• Why does it matter? Because Heathrow itself was not directly hacked. This was a supply chain attack, which shows that when a provider goes down, every business that depends on them feels the effects.

For SMEs, this is a wake-up call. You may not run an airport, but you almost certainly rely on external providers — cloud accounting, booking systems, payroll, email or ecommerce platforms. If they are attacked, you will be disrupted too.

Why Small Businesses Should Pay Attention

Cybercrime is not just a problem for large corporations. Smaller organisations often face the hardest consequences because they don’t have the same resources to recover.

Here are a few reasons why the Heathrow story matters for SMEs:

• You rely on suppliers too. If your booking system, payroll provider or email goes offline, your business stalls.
• Downtime hurts more. Heathrow can absorb days of disruption. A small business might not survive a single day of lost sales or missed orders.
• Hackers use broad attacks. Many campaigns are automated. Whoever is vulnerable gets hit, regardless of size.
• Cybersecurity is business continuity. If your systems fail, your ability to serve customers fails too.

Practical Takeaways for SMEs

The Heathrow incident highlights how important it is to build resilience, not just defences. You don’t need a huge IT budget to get started. Here are four areas where every small business can strengthen cyber resilience.

1. Business Continuity Planning

Think in tiers of fallback options so you always have a way to keep operating:

• Tier 1: Automatic backups or cloud failover (for example, a secondary website host).
• Tier 2: Local alternatives (keeping critical files locally or having a backup internet line).
• Tier 3: Manual processes (paper records, phone orders, card readers that work offline).

Define how quickly you need each service restored. You might need sales systems back within hours, but internal admin tools could wait until the next day.

2. Backup and Resilience

• Independent copies: Regularly export customer and sales data so you are not fully reliant on one provider.
• Offline backups: Keep a copy in a secure, disconnected location so ransomware cannot reach it.
• Avoid single vendor lock-in: Where possible, have a second option or provider in place for critical services.

3. Incident Response and Practice

Don’t wait for a real attack to figure out your response.

• Run simple tabletop exercises where you test scenarios like “our cloud system is down” or “we cannot access emails.”
• Make sure everyone knows their role: who updates customers, who switches to manual processes, who talks to suppliers.
• Keep backup communication methods handy, like a staff phone tree or WhatsApp group, in case your main system fails.

4. Supply Chain Risk Management

Since most SMEs rely on third-party platforms:

• Check your suppliers. Ask how they handle security, backups and incident reporting.
• Build it into contracts. If possible, include clear terms about data recovery and communication during outages.
• Test together. For your most critical partners, talk through what happens if their system goes down.
• Reduce single points of failure. Don’t let one provider control everything if alternatives exist.

Final Thoughts

The Heathrow cyber attack shows how quickly things can unravel when a supplier is compromised. It also shows that no business, large or small, operates in isolation anymore.

For small and medium-sized businesses, the takeaway is clear. You cannot afford to ignore cybersecurity. By raising awareness in your team, planning for disruptions, keeping backups and knowing your suppliers, you give your business the best chance of staying open when things go wrong.

If Heathrow can be brought to a standstill by a cyber attack, imagine how quickly the same could happen to a business like yours.